Free Adam's Woods by Greg Walker Page A

walked up to the door and knocked. The sound made him jump. Reluctantly, he knocked again when no one came. He put his hands to the glass but nothing stirred in his field of vision. The boy turned the handle of the door, and it opened.
     
    “ Hello?” he said in a small voice that strangely angered him with its timidity.
     
    “ Anybody here? Randy?” he called again only louder, trying to not to sound as weak this time, but willing to collapse into tears if his friend’s mom or dad should come around a corner.
     
    He stood in the living room. The silence of the house mirrored his own. He began climbing the steps, hearing the creaks not quite like the ones in his house, but close enough to make him tremble. Randy's parents' bedroom door was closed. As his eyes got used to the lower light levels of the indoors, he made out some sort of tracks that went right up to the door and stopped. The tracks were long lines as if someone had pulled a wagon through the house, and nearly blended in with the burgundy color of the carpeting. He turned around and followed them back to the stairs where they showed up as half-moon shapes on each step, until by the bottom of the flight they more or less disappeared. He lifted up his shoes and the soles were red, but not by any design of the manufacturer. The iron smell of blood came to him then, had been there all along he realized. He decided he’d missed it due to becoming too used to its scent, like when his family had visited the Laramies' at their dairy farm. The overpowering smell of manure eclipsed all on stepping out of the car, but was practically non-existent on getting back in to go.
     
    He went down the hallway towards his friend’s room, where they’d played with their Star Wars figures and built Lego trucks and talked about playing football for the Steelers someday, and saw the same sort of tracks on the floor, but narrower. He passed by the bathroom, went back and turned on the faucet to take a drink from it. He splashed cold water on is face and looked in the mirror. It felt good to see the face of a living person, even his own. He knew what he’d find in Randy’s room, but decided to go in anyway.
     
    The sheets and blankets and the wall were spattered and streaked with blood. But Randy wasn’t there. It came to him that the tracks were the marks left by heels coated in blood being dragged across the carpet. Dazed, he went back to the closed door and opened it. Nothing there but dark stains.
     
    The boy crept back down the stairs and out the door, leaving it wide open. He noticed more tracks outside, in the form of flattened grass. He got on his bike and rode, gained awareness of the hysteria building inside and regarded it curiously, like an extra appendage he’d just discovered, not quite sure what to do with it. For now he focused on feeling nothing at all, barely keeping the screams at bay, well trained by the months of lying in his bed marinated in fear; that terror was not quite this refined, but near enough to be kin.
     
    He rounded the corner on return his house and saw the white van parked out in front. The back doors were open, and he made out a pair of skewed bare feet disappearing into the utter darkness of its interior. The sun should have provided some light within, but he knew now that places existed where the sun never reached. After a pause, the man appeared, a piece of that darkness that detached and took shape; a man shape wearing a pair of boots, bluejeans, and a plain black t-shirt. He wore a ball cap that shaded his eyes, the shadow like a pair of dark sunglasses that revealed nothing. He jumped down and shut the doors, and then turned around to face the boy, watching with eyes he couldn’t see that burned a hole through him.
     
    He knew the man had taken the bodies from his house, just as he’d collected Randy and his parents, knew he’d witnessed the final swallow of the van consuming his father. The boy too understood the quiet, the